An illusion
by Time Lord of many names
Summary: Some illusions we shape carefully for ourselves ourselves. Neglecting what we shouldn't. ... Music: 'Sorrow' by IAMX.
1. Sorrow, you are my light

Garak slowed himself down just for a couple of instants at the sight of the doctor that was already waiting for him at the table in the replimat. Smiling, he thought that he appreciates these moments especially high. It pleases one to sense that someone considers your company worth waiting. Julian was so ingenuous in it that he reminded him more of a bird that doesn't see a predator that already approached stealthily than of someone who's waiting for a friend to meet.

"Good afternoon, doctor," Garak ran his palm over Julian's shoulders in a gentle touch, making him shiver.

"I haven't heard you approaching again, Garak," he smiled for an answer. "So, what are you willing to talk about today?"

Today they were discussing the poetry of Iloja of Prim. Julian found it too mannered and unduly emphasized. Serialist poets of the time of the First Republic tried to berhyme the way of thinking contemporary with them, but the doctor couldn't get rid of the sensation that all the emotionality, all the passion, put in the lines he read, were artificial, served but not expressed, persuaded but not revealed.

Just like Garak.

Garak seemed to choose the pieces that could let them get into a fight on purpose, so he could display his unquestionable intellectual supremacy to the doctor time and again — at least, Julian saw their debates this way. He argued with the cardassian, defending his position, but in the end, was it really that important to Julian himself to vanquish in their endless fight by all means? Garak looked so alone on the station, left by the Cardassian Union, why not to give in to him, not to let him feel a bit better because of his superiority consciousness? Disregarding what opinion Julian held himself on this matter.

Garak's observant eyes seemed to follow the thread of thoughts of his partner in conversation, perceiving slightest changes in facial expression, pose, manner of holding a fork or a mug.

"Perhaps, the case is, doctor, that you see what you are expecting to see. You are talking about mannerism, artificiality, insincerity, but aren't these the traits of the Federation?"

Julian choked with his tea.

"Wait... what?!"

Garak half-closed his eyes. Julian's face definitely revealed carefully pent-up rage that he had a chance to see in the doctor's features on so rare occasions.

"Does the Federation sincerely want to help Bajor? Isn't the case that the Federation wants Bajor to join it? Isn't it that the station resides near the wormhole and has its strategic value? While Bajor was at war with Cardassia and pleaded for help, did the Federation help it? Or did it hide beneath the Prime Directive when it suited its intentions and then find a loophole in it when its priorities shifted a bit to the side? To my thinking, it is mannered enough and fairly artful," Garak sneered unabashedly.

The whole time he was talking, the doctor could nothing but to open and close his mouth. Resenting, overfilled with indignation, he was so perfect that Garak was about to believe, to let himself sink into illusion that everything that was going to be said afterwards shall be said because Julian is aware of the essence and the basis of the cardassian flirting as well as himself.

"Garak!"

"I'm all ears," the cardassian took a sip of the rokassa juice.

"You never tire to astonish me with your capability to wrench any fact, to sophisticate any thought, to turn the concepts upside down — and all of it just to... to..."

"To?" Garak tilted his head slightly to the side, feeling the blood beginning to run a bit faster, warming his cold limbs.

"To demonstrate your hypothetic intellectual supremacy!" Julian spat out finally into his face, flushed, breathing heavily because of anger, reluctant to cease, that meddled so inaptly in a consistent line of his thinking.

"Hypothetic indeed?" Garak's smile intertwined condescension with a shade of tenderness.

"I may charge you with exactly the same," Julian went on coolly, trying diligently to compose his features. "You see only what you are expecting to see. If it's a common practice on Cardassia to say one thing, while implying another, and to do yet something else, it doesn't mean that all the forces in the quadrant follow the same pattern of interplay."

"And yet you just called the Federation a force yourself, doctor," he took another sip. "Doesn't that mean that its presence on this station is precisely the same question of the balance of power?"

Julian knuckled one hand and made a sound, similar to a growl.

"Garak, how can it be that we were talking about poetry and you led our conversation elsewhere?"

"Was it me who did it, good doctor?" Garak raised his eyeridges a bit questioningly. "It was you who charged serialist poets with insincerity because in your judgement their poetry has more of politics than of sentiment," the last word melted on his tongue.

Most important was to calculate carefully, how and what with he could hit Julian hard enough for him to be no longer able to follow his smug federal tolerance position and to step into a fight more fierce than he usually let himself to be drawn in. Garak didn't want to scare the doctor away, but these rare moments, when he managed to make him flare up, raise his voice on himself, say something sharp, were magnificent. For a couple of instants he could imagine that the doctor knew the rules of the game, that it was not an illusion, shaped by him for himself, that Julian wasn't that hopelessly naive as it truly was.

A deep inhale, a deep exhale. The doctor tries to compose his features again. Garak drinks the rokassa juice to not let himself believe too much in his own deception and at the same time to soften even remotely the glare of the unescapable onrush of heavy emotions because it still is a deception.

"Perhaps, I should read this poem over again," Julian says with an obvious effort and tries to smile.

"Perhaps, we should find a subject of discussion more pleasant to you," Garak suggests softly, returning a smile that looks sincere. His mug is empty.

At ten meters from them lieutenant Dax and major Kira are passing by, sent by commander Sisko to deal with another debatable question between Bajor and the Federation. Jadzia shoots a watchful look to their side.

"In point of fact, I rather feel sorry for Garak," she says in a low voice for only Nerys to hear her.

Nerys smiles wryly and they keep on going their way.

"I would never have thought I would say that, Dax..." she jerks up one eyebrow like if being bemused by herself and casts a musing glance on her friend, "but me either."


	2. Show me your beautiful anger

Julian was angry. Frankly speaking, he was not just angry or irritated, he was furious. A PADD in his hand squeaked pathetically and started twinkling his screen. After Garak's — who seemed to provoke him intentionally and not for the first time — yesterday escapade, the doctor promised himself — again — that he will hold himself together, that he won't let himself be provoked into another senseless duel with questionable epithets. And then?

Barely holding himself from throwing the PADD into a bulkhead at the risk of breaking it to shatters, Julian inhaled deeply and then deeply exhaled. No doubts, Iloja of Prim was just an excuse. Like Shakespeare was an excuse before. Or Llaniy Kess. Or anyone else — he wasn't keeping count of their, as he thought, negligible conflicts in the end. Doctor Julian Bashir was a Starfleet officer, what meant the capacity for diplomatic fix-ups of misunderstandings of any kind was a part of his job. But this time Garak wasn't going to get away with it just like that.

Julian ran his eyes over the paragraph, marked by him out of notes on and annotations to the works of serialist poets, left and composed by vulcan literary critics and researchers, requested yesterday from the Vulcan databases, again. Notes that turned out to be much more essential to the understanding of the actions of Garak himself than to the understanding of the poetry of Iloja of Prim. He shook his head in disbelief again and ran his hand through his hair angrily.

Today Garak was busy, but Julian himself had a free day. He narrowed his eyes revengefully. And nothing could stop him from coming straight to the tailor's shop to tell everything he was thinking about his sly nature. Garak willed to see him in anger? Well then, Julian would give him this opportunity.

Having left his quarters at a hasty pace, the doctor headed towards the Promenade. Only this morning he would try to calm down, tell himself that anger in not the answer, rage is not a solution, but now the blood was boiling in his veins so that the fact itself that he still didn't switch over to running was a victory.

The doors to the shop slid to the sides with a susurration, letting an unexpected visitor in. Garak rose his eyes from the PADD on which he was registering an order for the first officer of the docked the day before yesterday freighter's captain. Some more customers were studying clothes, represented on the dress stands, but the doctor seemed to pay no attention to them at all. His eyes were glaring, lips shut tight and the nostrils were inflating with his every inhale which happened more often than usual.

"Doctor Bashir, how unexpected it is to see you—" Julian didn't let him finish. Having walked up to Garak very close, the doctor snatched the PADD from his hands and threw it on a cutting table.

"You thought, you can get away with it, didn't you, Garak?" smelling a rat, customers headed for the exit, not willing to become witnesses of a scandal. "Then, don't you even hope for it!"

"I do genuinely not understand, what are you talking about, doctor," Garak opened up his eyes in a clueless perplexity.

"Oh, you don't, really! I'm a blockhead, incapable to see an inch beyond my nose, in your opinion, am I not? Fine! Charming! Now then, just for the record, if there is a blockhead among us present here, then it is you!" Julian almost shouted it into the face of the taken aback cardassian. The doors opened and closed, letting out the last of the hurriedly withdrawing bystanders of the scene played out.

As by the wave of the hand Garak reclaimed his unchangeable unflappability and narrowed his eyes slowly.

"Then enlighten me, doctor, what so dumb have I managed to say or to do for you to burst in to me like a whirlwind and to perform a storm right in front of my customers' eyes?"

"You did use me!"

"And when did using someone grow to be considered dumb?" Garak enquired sarcastically, sensing the irritation and pleasant excitement starting to spread over his body at the halves.

"Oh, that was smart, but it doesn't make you less dumb, Garak!"

Garak blinked.

"Doctor," he began softly, "may it be that you—"

"You fooled me. And not just once. You took advantage of my trust and my apparent naivete. Only I'm anything but naive," Julian drew another step closer, so that now their faces were separated by a couple of inches at the most. The doctor's gaze was direct and unblinking and the feverish flare in his eyes gave him a truly remarkable expression. "I consider you a hypocritical self-obsessed egoist, Garak," he said distinctly, detaching every word. "A mediocre tailor. A blockhead, incapable to notice obvious things. It's hard to believe that I genuinely could see you as a real spy, equal to incredible deeds," Garak's nostrils inflated against his will, uncovering his barely repressed anger. The doctor half-closed his eyes without breaking an eye contact. "Do such intonations make it more clear to you, how much I am interested in you?"

Garak moistened his dry lips. Julian did the same.

Shouts in the store couldn't be left unnoticed. Major Kira gave Dax, who was laughing quietly in her sleeve while ordering another raktajino, a questioning look.

"Perhaps, someone slightly complemented notes on the works of Iloja of Prim," she answered evasively on a silent question of her friend and feigned a sigh before giving a wink. "I have absolutely no idea who it could be."


End file.
